Sunday, May 8, 2011

pinata

The Pinata post below was a great post. While i was reading it, it reminded me of a article i read awhile back, and it made me kind of sad. the article was about the "act of violence"in breaking the pinata. There was a town in the U.S. that has decided to outlaw the old style of pinatas which you must hit with a stick to break. it was said that that teaches a negative lesson to the kids involved in the activity. So, in response to this, a new type of pinata has been created that eliminates the act of violence. It has a pull string that when pulled, open the pinata. I do not understand this. I do not agree with this, especially now after I read the post below and learned the real history and meaning behind the pinata.

I knew that they had pull pinatas, but the ones I knew of where for little kids. One of my friends had one for her daughter's first birthday, and the way it worked was that not all the strings made the candy fall out. So the little kids took turns pulling until the right one was pulled. I thought it made sense for toddlers. However, I cannot believe that the pinata was outlawed because of the "violence". Makes me wonder if they had other motives since the history clearly shows that a pinata is a positive thing.

I have seen one of these before at my family parties for my little cousins. Everyone pulls a string and there is only one that releases all the candy. When I was younger we always had the pinatas that you hit, I have never associated that with violence. I turned out fine after all these years with the old fashion pinatas :)

I've heard of the "pull string" pinatas, they don't sound nearly as fun as the traditional sort. They might make sense if you wanted a pinata but had limited space for swinging the stick around, though.

Hitting a pinata is not meant to be vicious, its sole purpose for kid's at least is to get the candy out. Pull strings defeat this whole purpose and take away from putting the effort in prior to getting a ground full of candy.

I'm pretty sure that if Pinatas stopped being shaped like cute animals and characters that this wouldn't have been a problem. The other Pinata post that told of the history and significance was very informative and if pinatas were still treated with the historical significance they once were then we probably wouldn't think of them as so 'violent' because you're hitting an abstracted object not some character's face.